Scared Music

Kindling: Scared Music

Kindling has announced it's latest album, Black & Bluegrass: A Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne.

Thanks to MTV, Ozzy Osbourne and his family are household names - sort of a Beverly Hillbillies for the 21st century. Kindling could not agree more. Trading Ozzy's anguished vocals for high-lonesome harmonies, and screaming guitars for lightning-quick banjos, this collection gives the music of heavy metal's founding father the bluegrass treatment. Performed by Kindling and featuring such classics as "Crazy Train," "Paranoid," and "Flying High Again." Black and Bluegrass cooks up a tribute as good as mama's cornbread - with a side of dove heads.

Black & Bluegrass: A Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne is the kind of record that should probably never be made. It is a cynical pairing of two completely divergent streams of culture that is obviously only in existence to bilk people out of their money. Still, that being said, it is actually a pretty good record. Bluegrass is a surprisingly elastic form of music that can easily transform a heavy metal anthem like "Crazy Train" into something that sounds like it was written by Bill Monroe. Well, almost. The band doing the transforming of both solo Ozzy and Black Sabbath classics is called Kindling, and the four performers in the band are very proficient musicians and singers who sound like they are in on the joke. Their take on "Paranoid" is especially fun with plenty of lightning-fast pickin' and a suitable hellfire-and-brimstone vocal. They also do weird things with "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath" and "Shot in the Dark" that almost defy nature. Most likely bluegrass fans will shun this like the plague, and Ozzy fans, should they stumble across it, will find the concept pretty hokey. It's their loss because Black & Bluegrass is a barrel of fun.

Lee Krähenbühl states, "There are plenty of innate differences in the styles that make a fusion difficult — the concept of melody being one. This album pinpoints the fact that in their original versions, these songs contain precious little melody, especially in the vocals, and we had to work hard to extract that and create harmonies behind the Shawn's lead"

Shawn Kirchner added, "Ozzy's songs are about alienation, an important issue for today's church. The church should be not be for just one type of music"

Peg Lehman indicated that the reason that Kindling made this album was, "we've run out of music for the autoharp".

Steve Kinzie was happy that none of the lyrics were attributed to Nelson Mandela.

Kindling premiered many of the numbers off their new CD at a concert hosted by the Tonoloway Primitive Baptist Church located in Hancock, Md.

Joseph Helfrich, not to be out done, will be releasing Fade to Bluegrass; The Bluegrass Tribute to Metallica, and donating the proceeds to a Suicide Prevention Hot-line.